Obama defends record on marriage

President Barack Obama is defending his record on promoting strong families in the African-American community, rejecting suggestions during an interview released Monday that he hasn’t done enough as president to tout the benefits of marriage.

“We address it explicitly all the time,” Obama told Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly in an exchange recorded before Sunday’s Super Bowl.

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In response to O’Reilly’s statement that Obama and first lady Michelle Obama were not engaged in a campaign to reduce out-of-wedlock births among black Americans, the president insisted that such messages are part of his rhetoric even if the media doesn’t pick up on them.

“I will send you at least 10 speeches I have made since I have been president, talking about the importance of men taking responsibility for their children, talking about the importance of young people delaying gratification. talking about the importance of when it comes to child rearing, paying child support, spending time with your kids, reading with them,” Obama said. “So, whether it’s getting publicity or not is a whole different question.”

The president did not cite speeches where he had directly promoted marriage, but he insisted that he done so.

O’Reilly cited statistics showing that 72 percent of African-American children are born out of wedlock, a factor often leading to poverty, but Obama sought to broaden out the conversation to other racial groups.

“What’s interesting when you look at what’s going on right now, you are starting to see in a lot of white working-class homes similar problems when men can’t find good work, when the economy is shutting ladders of opportunity off from people, whether they are black, white, Hispanic, it doesn’t matter, that puts pressure as well on the home,” the president said.

“So, you have got an interaction between an economy that isn’t generating enough good jobs for folks who traditionally could get blue collar jobs even if they didn’t have a higher education and some legitimate social concerns that compound the problem. And, so, we want to hit both.”

Obama said the White House is gathering “philanthropists and business people, city by city” to address both social and economic aspects of the issue.

The interview, recorded after a live interview before Sunday’s Super Bowl, aired Monday on Fox News’s “O’Reilly Factor.”